BOOKS/Alvena Bieri

Having a Stake in the Business

All the way from the community-owned Green Bay Packers to a host
of other smaller enterprises and cooperative communities, cooperation
still is effective in our society which so often exalts competition
over cooperation. That is my conclusion after reading Cooperation
Works! How People Are 'Using Cooperative Action to Rebuild
Communities and Revitalize the Economy by E.G. Nadeau and David
Thompson (Lone Oak Press, 1412 Bush St., Red Wing, MN. 55066).

Cooperative enterprises are 100 percent American and go far back
in our history--mutual fire insurance societies, volunteer fire
departments, barn raisings, and threshing bees. But in more recent
times, a cooperative can be even more important. The authors define a
cooperative as an enterprise owned and controlled by the people who
use its services. It provides these services at cost, and any profits
are given to its member-owners based on the amount of business
transacted, not on the amount of money invested. They are
democratically controlled, meaning that each member has one vote.

They explain that there are four kinds of cooperative
organizations: those owned by producers, like farmers' groups; those
oriented toward consumers such as credit unions, employee co-ops,
like taxi companies in some cities; and business co-ops, like
hardware stores and fast-food franchises.

One of the best-known cooperatives in the United States is the
Green Bay Packers in Wisconsin, a community-owned professional
football team. As we know, sports teams are a big and growing
business. Nadeau and Thompson point out that fans are much more loyal
to their hometown team than are the owners who don't hesitate to move
from one city to another in search of more profit. But in Green Bay
the Packers have inspired such loyalty that scarce season tickets are
often passed on in wills or even contested in divorce proceedings.
The Packers have survived, the authors emphasize, because they are a
corporation designed mainly to provide a community service, in this
case entertainment, and not to make a big profit.

Many cooperative groups are also part of small businesses on Main
Street, One is Ace Hardware with its 5,000 stores, which changed in
1976 from "a privately-owned wholesaler to being a retail-owned
support organization." The writers report that all over the country
Ace has had remarkable success with its policy of "high-profit
retailing and low-cost distribution" mainly through cooperative
buying.

The book lists 50 case studies of all kinds of cooperatives. In
the appendix is a list of the 100 largest cooperatives in the U.S.,
listing their revenues, assets, and locations. The same publisher
also has a good history of the Minnesota Farmers' Union. Such farm
groups and farmers' alliances were instrumental in starting the early
populist movement.

Now if you're ready to pursue the concept of cooperation on a
personal level by joining a community, you should know about the
"Communities Directory" which is a huge list of communities, from
religious groups to organic farms to urban neighborhoods. Write the
Fellowship for Intentional Community, Route One Box 156, Rutledge MO
63563.

We are left with an obvious question. What if we could take the
ideal of cooperative ownership and expand it? What if we could
arrange things so that we all could own a real stake in this country?
It boggles the mind.